I largely agree with Richard Taylor: ultimately the purpose of the
reference code is to provide a unique identifier for each entity held in
the archives.

Question: what kinds of entity do we need to identify? Do we merely need
a unique identifier for entities at item level, as Richard suggests? I
think there is almost certainly a case for identifiers at other levels
too - certainly at those levels which represent physical rather than
conceptual entities, if I can put it that way. 

Thus if an item comprises a number of pieces, we might require the
facility to assign a code to each piece - and it seems wholly logical
that the piece codes should be "sub-divisions" of the item code.
Similarly if the item is itself a component of a series, there seems to
be strong case for saying that the item codes should be "sub-divisions"
of a series code. In my experience, a coding scheme can support this
kind of sub-division without any perceptible strain.

At higher levels I am not so sure. Notoriously, in the world of changing
administrative structures in which we now live, a series can be
generated by business activity in a number of departments/divisions over
a period of time (and can also represent more than one function/activity
of the organisation). So an attempt to "tie" every series to a single
administrative origin, whether by using a reference code or by some
other means, might well seem unduly restrictive.

What about automated systems for archival cataloguing? Despite Dick
Sargent's comment to the list, most if not all of the systems currently
on the market do presuppose that a series can belong to only one
"parent" within the hierarchy. In due course, however, we will probably
see a new generation of systems which will allow series to be assigned
to multiple "parents", in order to reflect the complexity of the
administrative or functional structures within which they were created.
If I am right about this, we should try not to introduce coding schemes
designed purely to cope with the limitations of currently-available
automated systems. To do so would merely inhibit future research and
development of more flexible applications.

Like many archivists, in my current post I inherited a variety of wildly
inconsistent reference coding schemes. The Adlib software which this
office is now using does require the use of a code at each descriptive
level, but it does not insist that the codes grow incrementally as they
descend through the levels. The flexibility of the Adlib system in this
area was one of the reasons that led us to purchase it.

Geoffrey Yeo [[log in to unmask]]
Manager: Information and Archives

Royal College of Physicians of London
11 St Andrews Place, London NW1 4LE
Tel: 0171 935 1174
Registered Charity no. 210508




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